Cognition and Language: From Apprehension to Judgment -- Quantum Conjectures

We critically discuss the two moments of human cognition, namely, apprehension (A),whereby a coherent perception emerges from the recruitment of neuronal groups, and judgment(B),that entails the comparison of two apprehensions acquired at different times, coded in a suitable language and recalled by memory. (B) requires self-consciousness, in so far as the agent who expresses the judgment must be aware that the two apprehensions are submitted to his/her own scrutiny and that it is his/her duty to extract a mutual relation. Since (B) lasts around 3 seconds, the semantic value of the pieces under comparison must be decided within this time. This implies a fast search of the memory contents. As a fact, exploring human subjects with sequences of simple words, we find evidence of a limited time window , corresponding to the memory retrieval of a linguistic item in order to match it with the next one in a text flow (be it literary, or musical,or figurative). Classifying the information content of spike trains, an uncertainty relation emerges between the bit size of a word and its duration. This uncertainty is ruled by a quantum constant that can be given a numerical value and that has nothing to do with Planck’s constant. A quantum conjecture might explain the onset and decay of the memory window connecting successive pieces of a linguistic text. The conjecture here formulated is applicable to other reported evidences of quantum effects in human cognitive processes, so far lacking a plausible framework since no efforts to assign a quantum constant have been associated. Outline 1-Introduction on perception, judgment and self-consciousness 2The transition from apprehension to judgment 3-Role of the short term memory in linguistic elaboration 4-Quantum conjecture in the dynamics of neuronal synchronization 5Entropy of perceptions and quantum of action 6-Onset of the quantum behaviour 7-Comparison with other approaches to quantum cognition 8Current misunderstandings between apprehensions and judgments Bibliography This paper is a tribute to the late John S. Nicolis, a fine scientist who, already in the early 1980’s, has pioneered the application of chaotic dynamics to brain processes . A review of his approach is reported in [Nicolis]. [Contribution to the volume in honour of John S. Nicolis : Chaos, Information Processing and Paradoxical Games, G. Nicolis and V. Basios (eds), World Scientific, Singapore, 2013 ]